A quarter of a million hryvnias a year and a cold house. How Ukrainians survived the winter

The fourth winter of the war has proved to be one of the hardest for Ukrainian households since February 2022. This is not only due to the freezing temperatures or rocket strikes on energy infrastructure, but also to the simple inability to pay for heating. This conclusion is drawn from a report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), prepared based on the results of the 23rd round of the General Population Survey, conducted between January and March 2026 among over 40,000 randomly selected respondents across the territory controlled by Ukraine.

The study covered housing conditions, expenditure on rent and utilities, access to backup power supplies, the reliability of heating systems and the cost of solid fuel. For the first time in this round of the survey, the level of heat sufficiency, interruptions in district heating, the heat retention capacity of buildings and the drop in indoor temperature during power cuts were recorded separately — which made it possible to assess much more accurately how the country’s housing stock withstood the winter strain.

Money, not heating: the main reason for cold homes

Although attacks on energy infrastructure continued throughout the winter, the main factor behind inadequate heating was not the destruction of the networks, but the financial difficulties faced by households.

Only 32% of respondents said they were able to heat their homes as much as they needed. The majority — 59% — deliberately reduced their heat consumption to save money. It is telling that this proportion is virtually the same among both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and those who remained in their homes — 59% and 60% respectively. This indicates the nationwide nature of the problem of heating affordability, rather than a specific vulnerability among displaced persons.

The situation was even more acute on the front line. There, only 25% of households were able to heat their homes without restrictions, whilst 65% cut back on heating to save money — compared to 56% in non-frontline areas. The IOM attributes this gap to a combination of lower incomes and greater infrastructure damage in these very areas.

How much did the heating cost?

The median monthly cost of heating across Ukraine was 1,000 hryvnias; among internally displaced persons (IDPs), it was slightly higher at 1,188 hryvnias. Heating accounted for around 31% of total utility costs, with the remainder going towards water, gas for cooking, and electricity for lighting and other basic needs. The median monthly utility bill totalled 3,200 hryvnias — 200 hryvnias more than last year.

If the monthly cost of heating is extrapolated to a five-month heating season, a typical household with district heating spent around 5,000 hryvnias per season. This is roughly a third of the single benchmark of 19,400 hryvnias set out in Ukraine’s Winter Response Plan, which was calibrated for solid fuel — a significantly more expensive heating method.

Households heated with wood needed to spend an average of 14,337 hryvnias per season. Three in ten of these households reported that their seasonal expenditure was equal to or exceeded the benchmark of 19,400 hryvnias. Coal was cheaper — a median of 3,395 hryvnias, briquettes — 5,000, and pellets — 2,584 hryvnias. Households near the front line paid more for firewood — a median of 15,000 hryvnias compared to 13,000 hryvnias elsewhere, although they required the same volume — ten cubic metres. The difference is explained purely by price: disruptions in supply chains and complex logistics near the front line drove prices up.

A fifth of one’s income goes solely on utility bills

For displaced families, utility bills accounted for an average of one-fifth of their monthly income. With a median income of 15,000 hryvnias, a bill of 3,000 hryvnias amounted to exactly 20%. For around a third of displaced families with an income of less than 10,000 hryvnias a month, utility bills took up over 30% of their income — a level that, by standard humanitarian indicators, constitutes a crisis.

The majority of IDPs (56%) were renting accommodation — although this proportion had fallen slightly from 63% in the previous heating season. The median rent for displaced persons was 6,000 hryvnias per month, which, with a median income of 17,500 hryvnias for IDP tenants, accounted for 34% of their income. More than half — 53% — of IDP tenants spent over 30% of their income on rent alone, and for one in nine, rent exceeded 70% of total income. When utility costs were added on top, the total financial burden reached around half of the household’s income.

In frontline areas, the absolute amounts for utilities were lower (median — 3,000 hryvnias compared to 3,500 hryvnias in other regions), but incomes there were also significantly lower — 13,000 hryvnias compared to 20,000 hryvnias elsewhere. Therefore, the same amount on the bill took up a disproportionately larger share of the budget.

Disruptions to the heating supply: where and to what extent

62% of households with central heating reported at least one outage or insufficient heating during the season. Among internally displaced persons, this figure reached 65%. On average, a typical household experienced outages for five days a month, and among displaced persons — almost seven days. When an outage occurred, it often lasted the whole day: almost four in ten affected households recorded between 13 and 24 hours without heating per day.

Households in frontline areas reported interruptions in centralised networks less frequently on average — but mainly because a significantly smaller proportion of them used centralised heating. Instead, autonomous heating systems were more likely to fail there, and there were interruptions in fuel supplies — circumstances that the metric described did not record at all.

How to keep warm when the heating is turned off

A building’s thermal retention capacity — the length of time a home remains warm after the heating system is switched off — is a direct indicator of the quality of its structural elements: walls, roof, windows and doors.

24% of all households reported that their home cools down in less than three hours after the heating is turned off. Among IDPs, this figure reached 37%. At the same time, only one in five displaced families (19%) retained heat for eight hours or more, compared to a third of all respondents (33%).

The reason lies in housing tenure: only 7% of IDPs own their current home, compared to 60% of the non-displaced population. The vast majority of displaced people live in rented or provided accommodation, where they are denied the right to carry out repairs or insulation work. Moreover, improvements that increase the market value of the property may trigger a rent increase or eviction — an additional trap for tenants. Geographical proximity to the front line, as it turned out, is not in itself the main factor behind poor thermal insulation — it is equally unsatisfactory both at the front and in the rear.

Where power cuts did occur, 38% of households recorded indoor temperatures dropping to 16–18 degrees, 33% to 13–15, 16% to 10–12, and 5% below 10 degrees. The WHO sets 18 degrees as the minimum acceptable indoor temperature in winter to safeguard health. Even a brief drop below this level poses risks to vulnerable residents: the elderly, young children, and those with chronic conditions.

Help is available, but it reaches very few people

Government assistance towards utility bills — mainly in the form of housing subsidies — was received by 19% of all households. Among IDPs, this figure is half that — 9%. Humanitarian assistance for utility bills was received by 2% of the population as a whole and 3% of IDPs. As a result, 79% of all households and 86% of IDPs did not receive any form of support to pay for utility bills.

The housing subsidy system is formally open to IDPs, but registration requirements and the specific nature of their tenancy status effectively restrict access to it. On the front line, humanitarian aid for utility bills was more geographically concentrated — 5% of households on the front line received it, compared with less than 1% in non-frontline areas. However, even there, 74% of families received no support whatsoever.

Survival strategies

51% of households and 52% of IDPs cut back on their consumption of firewood, coal, electricity or gas in the 30 days leading up to the survey in order to cover other basic needs. This strategy proved most common in frontline areas, where 55% of families resorted to it.

Cuts to utility bills often went hand in hand with reduced spending on healthcare — reported by 35% of households — and the depletion of savings (49%). Among the displaced, 14% had either moved to poorer-quality accommodation or had already exhausted this option — of these, 9% had nowhere else to move to. 12% of IDPs had missed rent payments in the month prior to the survey, risking eviction.

The situation on the front line was even more difficult: 35% of households were using four or more survival strategies simultaneously, compared with 26% in non-frontline areas. Crisis or emergency strategies were used by 52% of frontline families, compared with 47% elsewhere.